Untitled Western

by

John L. Doughty, Jr.

Copyright 1998

CHAPTER 1

I can't stand the stench of burning human flesh, and once
you've smelled it, you never forget it. I woke that morning, the
third without coffee, and somewhere below me in the valley, far
behind the boulders on the other side of the stream I had camped
beside, a thin trail of smoke drifted through the aspens.

Sally, the mule I rode, stood tethered nearby, both floppy
ears pointed toward the jumbled rocks and alternately raising and
lowering in a way I should have known meant something was wrong.
But sometimes she has more sense than I do.

"Sal," I said, "if that's a campfire, they've got coffee."

I saddled up, and we crossed to the other side. Beyond the
rocks, the valley opened up into a gentle wooded slope rising to
the mountains looming far ahead like a giant gray wall topped
with snow. We followed the rim of a gully emptying into the
stream behind us, and after walking a half-mile, Sally suddenly
stopped, her sides trembling and both ears thrust forward toward
a noise she could hear and I could not.

"Easy, Girl," I quietly reassured her, and the smell reached
my nose.

Indians, I thought, remembering the tracks of unshod ponies I
had seen the day before. My scalp for a cup of coffee seemed
like a bad trade. After two years of war fought mostly from
Salley's back, you'd think I would have learned to pay attention
to what her ears tried to tell me.

I loosened the thong around the hammer of the Colt Navy
revolver alongside my thigh and pulled the matching rifle from
the saddle scabbard, placing it across my lap and carefully
checking the cap on every nipple. Wanting no quarrel with
Indians--or white men either--I sat there for a long minute and
pondered my own foolhardiness.

But no Indian, I assumed, would build a fire producing so
much smoke, and the burning flesh was dead or screams of agony
would have pierced the mountain stillness. Then I heard laughter
and the voice of a white man. I nudged Salley.

Against her better judgement, I am sure, she started walking.
We skirted a knotted mass of trees washed down the side of the
mountain by the spring thaw, now only an early summer trickle,
and eased toward the billowing smoke and indistinct voice.
Around a turn of the gully, at the edge of a small clearing,
Salley stopped of her own accord.

No more than thirty feet away, the fire blazed, a coffee-pot
in the coals beside it. Two horses were tied to a bush on the
other side of the opening, a bay and a beautiful black gelding
with an ornate, black-and-silver saddle. Their riders stood
around the fire, one younger, one older and holding a branding
iron, the end glowing red in the morning shadows cast by the
mountain and the aspens. An Indian, a boy of no more than
fifteen with burned but still-living flesh, lay on the ground,
tied hands and feet with a lariat rope. "Rocking R" the brand
read in charred skin on both sides of his emaciated chest.

"Give it to him again, Lumpy," the younger man declared in
apparent delight. "He'll scream this time!"

The man called Lumpy lowered the iron to the Indian's right
thigh, and flesh sizzled and a thin trail of smoke rose to meet
that from the fire. Not a sound escaped the boy's throat, the
tensing of muscles and a grimace his only outward signs of pain.

The sickening odor reached my nostrils, flooding my mind with
memories of charred bodies and men in blue and in gray, still
alive but begging in God's name for death and an end to torment.
And permanently etched in my mind was the face of Zeke Watly, my
friend and neighbor, his gray uniform burned black and his lips
pleading in my name, "Daniel, Daniel," and then smiling as I
raised the pistol I still carried at my side.

I cocked the hammer of the Colt rifle and spoke: "Howdy."

Both men froze and then turned. I could see them clearly
now, and Lumpy had greasy hair sticking out around the brim of a
worn-out hat and wore ragged clothing like a man long past caring
what others thought of his appearance. He held the branding iron
awkwardly in his thick right hand, knowing that I knew he would
have to drop it in order to reach for the rusty pistol tucked
behind his belt.

The surprise on the younger man's face turned into a sneer.
Long blond hair flowed from beneath his black felt hat with a
silver band. Low at his side, the ivory grip on the polished brass frame of a
Spiller & Burr revolver protruded from a
holster that matched his hat and the saddle on the gelding tied
to the bush. His slender fingers inched toward the shiny pistol,
but the black hole in the end of the Colt rifle moved slightly.
The fingers stopped.

Both men watched me in a mixture of fear and curiosity. The
Indian glared up at me in pain and hatred. I towered over them,
tall and lanky on the back of a giant red mule whose shoulders
reached past their chins. They studied a narrow face no one had
ever called handsome, not even Ruby, the wife I left back in
Louisiana with her arms around a dead man.

My brown, unwashed hair reached past the collar of the
tattered and faded gray jacket I wore, dark stripes on the sleeve
marking the location of the sergeant's chevrons I had removed
after the battle of Gettysburg. Just six months before that
morning of the burning flesh, I had been Sergeant Daniel
Corrington, First Louisiana Brigade.

I had just turned twenty-five but looked ten years older.
The horror of seemingly endless killing had streaked my hair with
white, added lines to my face, and given my eyes a permanent
glare. And, on that morning, the blue Irish eyes of my ancestors
looked down at the two men, knowing that one or both of them
would die.

"Across the creek," I answered and looked at the pot in the
coals. "Saw your smoke and hoped you had coffee made."

The tension left both men's faces, and they glanced from me
to the barrel of the little Colt rifle not pointing at them but,
they knew, just an easy swing in their direction.

"Help yourself," the younger man ordered and leisurely moved
his hands from his sides and hitched both thumbs behind the
silver buckle of the fancy gunbelt.

"Obliged," I said, smiling, and lowered the hammer, slid the
rifle into the scabbard, and dismounted.

I had no false notions of the two men releasing the Indian
without a fight, and if one managed to draw and fire before he
died, I wanted Salley out of the bullet's path. Besides, at such
close range, a pistol was more useful than a rifle.

Except for Zeke, possibly, and certainly his father, Uriah, I
had never met my equal with a handgun. Rain or shine, we had
spent hours on the back porch of the old man's homestead, firing
into a dirt bank Zeke and I had piled against the picket fence.
"Daniel," I can still hear the old man saying, "You've got a
natural ability, but squeeze the trigger; don't jerk it!"

We would fire a thousand rounds, recover the misshapen balls,
melt them down and re-mold them back into bullets, and fire them
again. The knowledge gained in Uriah Watly's yard brought me and
Salley through the Civil War and Zeke to the battle of the
Wilderness. And now it would give life to a maimed boy and death
to the cocky young man standing before me, thumbs hooked behind a
silver buckle, legs spread in his best imitation of a
gunfighter's stance.

Arms at my side, I walked to the fire, found their tin cup,
and then leaned down and filled it with black, welcome liquid.

"When you're finished," the blond young man ordered me again,
"get back on that mule and off our range."

I raised to my feet, the cup in my left hand, my right a few
inches from the butt of the Colt pistol. Lumpy stuck the
business end of the iron back into the fire, and I sipped coffee
and walked slowly away and to the side, placing Salley safely out
of harm's way.

The cup emptied, and I lowered it. The end of the branding
iron again glowed red, and Lumpy raised it, his round face in a
toothless grin as he prepared to step toward the Indian.

"Blondie!" I commanded the young man. "Cut the rope. Let the
boy go."

Before the moment of death, it's like time stands still. The faces of men I sent to
meet their God in the name of war flash through my mind. I
remember them all. Their eyes held the same look of surprise.
Sometimes in my dreams, I see them again.

In the silence now around the campfire, I stared into the
young man's eyes and pleaded with my own for him to listen to
reason and live. But Lumpy dropped the branding iron, and the
thumbs moved.

The Colt seemed to leap into my hand, and flame erupted from
the barrel and the pistol turned to Lumpy. The branding iron hit
the ground, and he stood there in shock, his hand not having
reached the weapon in his belt.

The blond young man, his hand on the butt of the Spiller &
Burr, stared through unbelieving eyes at the widening crimson
stain across the front of his shirt. Then he
died and fell face-forward into the fire.

"Pull him out," I said as the stench of burning flesh again
filled the air, almost over-powered by the fumes of singed hair.

Lumpy grabbed the dead man's feet and jerked him from the
fire. The hat stayed, now mostly yellow flames. He looked from
me to the body, hatred oozing from every fiber of his being and
his hand seeming to agonize over the problem of the pistol in
his belt versus the one pointed at his belly.

"Pitch it," I said and holstered my Colt. "Or reach for it
and die."

I stood ready, fingers limp at my side. He tensed, and beads
of sweat popped out on his forehead. Then a look of resignation
came over him. His hand moved slowly to the pistol, and he
grasped the butt between thumb and forefinger and pulled it from
his belt.

"High," I said.

He threw it, and when it reached the peak of its trajectory,
the Colt filled my hand again and fired. The bullet clanged
against the sailing pistol, sending it spinning into the
underbrush.

"You made the right choice," I truthfully told him and eased
the Colt back into the holster.

"Mister," he growled, "you're good as dead." He looked down
at the smouldering body. "That's the boss's only son. You gonna
hang for sure."

The Indian boy still lay on the ground beside the fire. His
curious eyes watched us, not understanding a word we spoke and
wondering, I imagine, why one white man had shot another and was
he next.

I pulled the knife from the sheath at my back and threw it at
a stick of firewood near Lumpy's feet. It thudded home,
vibrated like the leaves on the trees above us, and the silver
and emerald handle mirrored a shimmering reflection of the nearby
flames. "Cut the boy free," I ordered.

Lumpy worked the knife out of the log and walked to the boy.
He misunderstood the older man's motives and struggled until the
blade sliced through the rope around his ankles. Then he turned
to me, his eyes wide in amazed understanding.

The knot at the boy's wrists parted, and Lumpy jumped back,
knife ready. The boy stood, swaying on the burned leg, his face
moving from me in wonder to Lumpy in hate.

"Go," I said and pointed to the trees.

He understood, and after a rage-filled moment of staring at
Lumpy, a knife now in his hand instead of a branding iron, the
boy limped away.

He could not run, I realized, and the angry cowboy would
surely follow him. "Wait," I called, and the boy stopped and
turned. "Horse," I said and pointed to the animals tied to the bush.

He walked to them, dragging the burned leg, and with a
grimace of pain, jumped astride the gelding.

He made no reply. I extended my hand, and he gave me the
knife, hilt first. The boy rode away without a backward glance. We watched him disappear, the sun now over the mountain and
its rays reflecting from the gelding's coat in shiny black
flashes through the white and gray trunks of the aspens.

"Damn," Lumpy cursed as I walked to his bay and cut the
reins. The horse lunged backwards, and at full gallop and with
empty stirrups flopping, chased after the gelding.

I walked to Sally, untied the saddlebags, and removed a
brass-bristled brush and an oily rag. I returned to the fire,
poured another cup of coffee, and dumped the grounds. Then I
rinsed and filled the pot with water from a canteen, placed it
into the flames, and waited for it to boil.

Lumpy, showing more anger over the loss of his horse than the
death of his boss's son, stalked back and forth, profanity
streaming from his mouth. "Sit down," I finally said. "And shut
up!"

He did and remained quiet for a while, propped against a tree
like a seething heap of rags. When the water boiled, I
disassembled the pistol, plunged the barrel into the steaming
liquid and inserted the brush again and again, removing all
traces of black powder fouling.

The heap spoke: "Mighty particular, ain't you?"

"Yes," I replied. Then I looked over at him and added as I
sipped from the tin cup, "But I'm alive . . . ain't I?"

I finished the coffee and cleaned while he fumed. "It's a
wonder you ain't dead," he grumbled, "seeing how long it takes
you to clean your gun."

I ignored the remark from a man with a probably useless gun,
walked to the saddlebags and reloaded my pistol, rotating the
cylinder so the chamber Uriah Watly had etched with a file mark
would be the first to fire. "Lumpy," I then said, "take off your
boots."

The cursing started again.

"Wouldn't take but half as long to clean this pistol," I
remarked, "after only one shot."

He struggled out of the boots and pitched them toward me. I
picked them up, and after quickly extending my arms and turning
my head, dropped the stinking bundle into the flames.

I picked up the branding iron and pushed the end into the
coals. Through the rising heat waves, I watched his anger turn
to worry. After a few minutes of hearing nothing but the
crackling fire, I raised the red-hot iron and spoke softly,
"There's something I want you to know."

I waited, giving him time to worry about his fate while the
eyes of us both gazed at the glowing end of the iron. "I'm sure
your boss and every hand on his ranch will ride after me," I
stated. "When they do, my first shot is for you, the second
for him."

I dropped the iron into the fire, mounted and rode away,
leaving the relieved man with those words of warning and,
hopefully, the memory of marksmanship most men would consider
impossible. My mind churned with the dilemma I now faced, and,
behind me, he must have heard and remembered nothing because I
heard him yell, "Mister! You're gonna die!"

I maneuvered Salley back along the gully, and we reached the
stream we had camped beside. She stopped and drank, and I filled
the two canteens tied to the saddle horn. The distant wall of
mountains circled around us, broken only by a wide opening even
further away, some thirty miles in the direction the stream
flowed. There, I figured, the land of the Rocking R spread out
across the lush grass along both banks, and its
cowhands were about to load guns and saddle horses.

The valley lay as the stream ran: north to south. Salley and
I had entered through a narrow break in the granite wall to the
east, and I saw no need to change the direction we had headed
since the day we left Uriah Watly's home in Louisiana.

I tugged on the reins and forced Salley into a trot, the
rising sun at our backs but its warmth having no effect on my
cold feeling of dread. At noon, the slope increased its upward
angle, and aspens and granite outcroppings gave way to boulders
the size of cabins, fractured from the face of the mountain by
some ancient force of nature.

The air grew thinner and colder but ever higher we climbed.
Salley's pace never slowed below an awkward gait almost any horse
could exceed, but the muscles of her haunches bulged with power
and stamina no horse could match.

The sun dropped below the peak before us, and we reached a
flat area holding a puddle of melted snow. She stopped, lowered
her head and drank. I dismounted and joined her, cupping my
hands and sipping the ice-cold water.

I turned. The slope below and the valley now spread out
before me lay dark and silent in the deepening evening.
"Nothing yet, Sal," I said as I climbed back into the saddle.

But they would come, I knew. And now another problem faced
us. Approaching darkness would soon force a stop to our flight,
and in the morning, the rising sun would illuminate the barren
slope and expose us to men still in shadows below. I could not
see a break in the mountain offering the chance of a path to the
other side.
"It's up to you, Sal," I spoke and slacked the reins and
prodded her forward.

She stepped ahead, walking slowly. Then she turned, still
climbing but in the direction of the ranch somewhere below us. I
almost pulled the reins, but as if she knew where she headed, the
walk changed into her ungainly trot.

An hour later, she seemed to kick her way up a rock-slide,
reached the top, and followed a path around a ridge jutting out
like a shoulder of the mountain. Then she stopped, and the
orange ball of the sun blazed in our faces.

Far below us, the emptiness of a vast desert stretched toward
the misty line of a mountain range on the horizon, our position
of height and distance giving the murky peaks the form of gently
rolling hills. I took the reins and guided Salley, downward now,
until we reached a pool of water oozing from beneath a ledge.
And there we camped.

I fed her the last handful of grain from the saddlebags and
rubbed her down, my hands massaging the muscles that had saved me
again, my voice gentle, praising her. "It's yonder, Sal," I
voiced my thoughts, my eyes toward the west and our destination.
"Colorado . . . California, and, Sal, beyond that . . . the
ocean."

The sun plunged into the edge of the desert, and the shadow
of night began several thousand feet below us at the base of the
mountain and raced upward, cloaking us in darkness. Behind us,
it creeped over the yellow radiance of snow-capped peaks, and
night came at last.

I spread my bedroll and lay there wrapped against the cold, a
saddle for my pillow. The sky filled with stars so brilliant and
close it seemed I could touch them. Somewhere down the
mountain, coyotes yipped into the moonless night. Loneliness
overwhelmed me like a chill no blanket can relieve, and I thought
of Ruby, the only woman I ever loved.